Using Open Source Materials
to Infuse Project-Based
Learning into General
Education Courses
• Peggy Brickman, Biology, University of Georgia
• Eddie Watson, UGA Center for Teaching and Learning
• Montgomery Wolf, History, UGA
Objectives
• Provide a case for the use of Open Education
Resources (OERs) in higher education
• Describe UGA’s exemplar implementations of OERs
along with our rationale and course selection
processes
• Provide opportunities for Q&A with those who are
teaching with OERs at UGA
Tuition vs. Inflation
Student Debt Trends
The Georgia Context
• National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE – 2011) – onethird of UGA students had unmet financial needs
• Financial needs contribute to attrition and extended
graduation rates
• Textbooks are a major contributor to financial needs - $900 to
$1,200 annually (Wiley, Green & Soares, 2012)
• Complete College Georgia Initiative seeks to address work
force needs and college matriculation and completion rates
• Launched “Incubator Grant” RFP last Spring
• Funding up to $25,000
Our Idea Was Simple
• Decrease the cost of higher education by fostering faculty
adoption of free, online textbooks
• Maximize cost savings by working with faculty who
• Teach large enrollment courses
• Currently uses an expensive textbook
• Economies of scale emerge with such targeting
Grant Funding and Approach
• Received $25,000 in both FY13 and FY14 from USG
• Funded graduate assistant; doctoral candidate in instructional
design
• Small summer stipends for faculty member
• Selected faculty member
• Based on class size
• Expensive textbook
• Opinion leadership of faculty member
• Approach was a partnership between faculty and the CTL
• Graduate student worked closely with the faculty member
• CTL team provides specific expertise at key points in project (data
collection, evaluation, learning technologies, pedagogy, etc.)
PE GGY BR ICK MAN
PROF E SSOR OF PLANT BIOLOGY
FRANKLIN COLLEGE
UNIVERSIT Y OF GEORGIA
BIOLOGY 1103: 300+ ENROLLMENT GEN ED
Course structure: Content tied to engaging
questions about biological issues relevant to
students. In addition to tests and quizzes,
students working on collaborative group projects,
that challenge them to evaluate sources of
information and communicate their
understanding of scientific claims in writing.
BIOLOGY 1103: 300+ ENROLLMENT GEN ED
•
•
•
•
Average textbook cost ~$100-$200
Students not purchasing the book
Students not reading the book they purchased
Made inquiry activities in class a challenge
OPENSTAX COLLEGE
SUPPORTED BY WILLIAM & FLORA HEWLETT FOUNDATION, BILL
& MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION, 20 MILLION MINDS
FOUNDATION, MAXFIELD FOUNDATION, OPEN SOCIETY
FOUNDATIONS, AND RICE UNIVERSITY.
CHALLENGES
• Organization
• Engaging students with readings from
several different topics not traditionally
found in the same chapter in a textbook
• Usability
Activity
Test
Assignment
Reading
Reading
* Unit  Topic  [reading + quiz + lecture + classroom activities + assignment +test]
TEAM:
C. Eddie Watson, Ph.D. Director for UGA’s Center for Teaching & Learning wrote and
received funding from the Board of Regents to support faculty to utilize OER
resources
So Mi Kim: Graduate student in Learning Design who assisted in the instructional
design help and accessibility
Denise P. Domizi, Ph.D. Coordinator of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,
UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning
Erin Dolan, Ph.D and Zack Lewis, Ph.D. co-instructors in the course
A Flipped Classroom:
U.S. History Survey
Montgomery Wolf
Course Goals:
1.
Learn History: By acquiring knowledge of the basic facts and events of U.S. history to 1865, we
will be able to identify the significant questions about the period: For example, why did
Europeans settle North America? What happened when European, African, and Native American
worlds collided? How did Americans define and understand the role of government? How did the
American political system develop over time? How did economic development affect religion,
culture, and politics? How was it that the United States entered Civil War?
2.
Think Historically: By learning to ask HOW and WHY as well as who, what, where, and when, we
will gain an understanding of historical change, of how historians think and interpret the past
through the lens of the present.
3.
Retrieve/Recover History: Through an exposure to a wide variety of historical sources and
practices, we will learn how historians go about "recovering” (interpreting) the past. We will
analyze a variety of secondary sources (writings by historians, including the textbook) and
primary sources (autobiography, cartoons, political speeches, etc.), learn to assess their
reliability, and produce our own interpretation of them.
4.
Do History: After learning some of the historian’s tools, we will employ these tools in producing
history in a variety of ways, including essays and a curated exhibit.
Do history
Recover History
Think Historically
Learn History
Catherine Locks, et al., History in the Making: A
History of the People of the United States of
America to 1877 (University Press of North
Georgia, 2013).
Political Cartoon:
Expansion of Slavery into the Territories
From the perspective of white southerners.
John Gast, “American Progress” (1874)
Concept map:
Describe the relationships between these concepts,
from the perspective of a western PA farmer
“Team-Based Learning”
• In-class group work
• Final project: Online exhibit
– Archives
– Video
– Material Culture